Every security model starts with a simple question: who or what is acting here? For years, enterprise identity systems mostly had two answers. A user account represented a person. An application registration represented software. Artificial intelligence agents introduce a third case: software that can plan, choose tools, and act with some autonomy. That difference is not cosmetic. It changes how credentials should work, who is accountable, how access should be reviewed, and how thousands of non-human actors can be governed without pretending they are employees.

The old two-way model is no longer enough

A user account is built around a human being. It normally has a sign-in name, a password or other credential, and often a second proof such as a phone prompt or one-time code. The design assumes that a person is present, making choices, and responsible for the session.

An application registration is built around a program. In Microsoft Entra, Microsoft’s cloud identity service, an application registration gives software an identity so it can request access to services. It commonly uses a secret or certificate as its credential. The design assumes the program’s behavior is largely fixed in code.

An artificial intelligence agent does not fit cleanly into either box. It is not a person, but it may act on behalf of business goals. It is not just a fixed background service, because it may reason over context, choose from tools, and take different paths depending on what it observes. That is why Microsoft Entra introduces a purpose-built agent identity: an identity record for an agent as a distinct non-human actor.

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The identity question. The important distinction is not whether something is human or software, but whether the identity model matches how it acts.

What an agent identity contains

An agent identity is a directory object for one artificial intelligence agent. It is not merely a tag placed on an ordinary account. It has its own anatomy, designed so the organization can name the agent, recognize it in tools, connect it to a responsible owner, and apply common policy through a template.

The first part is an identifier, often called an object identifier or object ID. This is a unique value generated by Microsoft Entra that names that specific agent identity inside the organization’s directory. People may use friendly names in portals and reports, but systems rely on the identifier.

The second part is the most important absence: the agent identity has no credentials of its own. It does not carry a password, client secret, or certificate that belongs only to that agent. Instead, it relies on its agent identity blueprint to obtain temporary tokens when it needs to act.

The remaining parts make the identity usable and governable. It has a display name that humans can understand in administration screens and collaboration tools. It has a sponsor, which is a user or group recorded as accountable for the agent. It is created from an agent identity blueprint, a reusable template that defines the type of agent and shared metadata. In some cases, it may also have a paired agent’s user account for older systems that require a user account to sign in.

  • Identifier: the unique object ID for this one agent identity.
  • Credentials: none owned by the agent identity itself.
  • Display name: the readable name shown to administrators and users.
  • Sponsor: the accountable human user or group.
  • Blueprint: the reusable template from which the identity was created.
  • Agent’s user account: an optional one-to-one account for systems that require user-account sign-in.
An agent identity is a directory object built from five distinct parts. Anatomy of an Agent Identity Object identifierunique directory name No own credentialsnothing standing to leak Blueprint referencesource of short-lived tokens Sponsoraccountable human or group Policy templatecommon controls applied
An agent identity is a directory object built from five distinct parts.

The credential difference is the security difference

The biggest practical difference between an agent identity and the older identity types is how credentials are handled. A user account commonly has a password or other sign-in credential. An application registration commonly has a client secret or certificate. An agent identity has neither as its own standing credential.

Instead, the agent relies on its blueprint to acquire tokens on its behalf. A token is a short-lived digital proof that lets a workload call a service for a limited time and purpose. The agent can still act, but it does not store a long-lived key that sits unused between actions.

This matters because standing secrets are one of the oldest and most persistent risks in enterprise environments. Secrets get copied into configuration files, logs, scripts, containers, developer machines, and forgotten automation. If each agent carried its own permanent secret, a large agent estate could become a large secret-sprawl problem.

The agent identity model reduces that exposure. It does not make access risk disappear, and it does not remove the need for authorization, monitoring, or review. But it avoids giving every agent its own long-lived credential to lose, leak, or hoard.

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Plain version. A user keeps a password, an application often keeps a secret, and an agent asks its blueprint for a temporary pass when it needs one.
With no standing secret, the agent gets a short-lived token from its blueprint. How an Agent Acts Needs to actno stored key Blueprintissues on demand Get a tokenshort-lived, scoped Call the servicethen it expires
With no standing secret, the agent gets a short-lived token from its blueprint.

The sponsor turns a non-human actor into an accountable one

A human user can be questioned, trained, suspended, or held responsible. A software agent cannot. That creates a governance gap unless the identity record points to an accountable person or group.

The sponsor field closes that gap. In Microsoft Entra, the sponsor records the human user or group accountable for the agent. If the agent behaves unexpectedly, triggers an alert, or appears in an access review, the organization can answer the practical question that always comes first: who owns this?

A sponsor is not the same thing as the agent’s runtime permission. Sponsorship is about accountability and contactability. Access control still needs its own policies, permissions, and reviews. But without sponsorship, access reviews degrade into archaeology: teams spend time guessing why an agent exists before they can decide whether it should keep access.

At scale, that difference becomes decisive. Ten experimental agents can be tracked informally. Ten thousand cannot. Sponsorship gives each non-human actor a named line of responsibility.

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Do not skip ownership. An agent without a sponsor may still work technically, but it is already failing a basic governance test.

The optional agent’s user account is a bridge, not the default

Some older systems only know how to accept a user account. They may not understand a purpose-built agent identity, even when the business process requires an agent to reach them. For that compatibility case, an agent can have an agent’s user account.

An agent’s user account is a real Microsoft Entra user account, but it is decorated to show that it represents an artificial intelligence agent. It has a different identifier from the agent identity. The relationship is one-to-one: one such user account is paired with one agent identity, and it is not meant to be a shared account used by several agents.

That design avoids two common mistakes. The first mistake is pretending every agent is just a normal employee, which confuses reporting, access reviews, and incident response. The second mistake is using one shared account for many agents, which destroys traceability. The paired account exists to satisfy systems that demand user-account sign-in while preserving the truth that the actor is an agent.

Most agents should not need this paired account. Where modern service-to-service identity works, the agent identity should stand on its own. The agent’s user account is a narrow compatibility mechanism, not a general identity strategy.

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Avoid shared accounts. If several agents hide behind one user account, investigations cannot reliably tell which agent did what.
A paired user account lets an agent reach systems that only accept users. A Bridge, Not the Default Agent identitypurpose-built Agent's user accountpaired bridge Legacy systemuser-only 1:1 paired accepted by
A paired user account lets an agent reach systems that only accept users.

How the three identity types compare in practice

The differences become clearer when you compare the assumptions each identity type makes. A user account assumes a person is present. An application registration assumes software is running according to predefined behavior. An agent identity assumes a non-human actor that may choose among actions and therefore needs both tight control and explicit accountability.

Credentials also differ. A user account proves itself with user credentials. An application registration proves itself with an application credential such as a secret or certificate. An agent identity does not own credentials; it relies on its blueprint to obtain short-lived tokens.

Ownership differs as well. A user is generally accountable for the user account. An application usually has an owner or development team, but that ownership may be treated as metadata rather than a core part of the identity model. An agent identity has a sponsor recorded so that the organization can identify the accountable person or group.

Policy inheritance is another distinction. Application registrations can be governed, but each application is often managed as a separate object. Agent identities are created from blueprints, which lets organizations stamp out many related agents with shared type information and policy context. That is what makes large-scale agent governance possible without handcrafting every identity from scratch.

  • Use a user account when the actor is a person and the session represents that person’s choices.
  • Use an application registration when the actor is conventional software with predictable behavior and application-managed credentials.
  • Use an agent identity when the actor is an artificial intelligence agent that needs non-human accountability, blueprint-based policy, and no standing credential of its own.
  • Use an agent’s user account only when a required system cannot authenticate the agent any other way.

Decisions leaders and practitioners must make

The identity model is not an abstract architecture choice. It changes the operating decisions security, platform, and application teams make every week.

Leaders need to decide which agents are allowed to exist, who may create them, and what sponsorship means in practice. A sponsor should not be a decorative field. The organization should know whether the sponsor approves access, receives incident notifications, participates in reviews, or delegates those duties to a group.

Practitioners need to decide when an agent gets a new identity, which blueprint it should use, and what systems it can reach. They also need rules for naming, lifecycle management, access reviews, and retirement. An abandoned agent identity is still a non-human actor in the directory, and an abandoned paired user account is even more dangerous if it is mistaken for a person.

The most important design principle is to resist convenience shortcuts. Do not run agents as employees. Do not let many agents share one user account. Do not give each agent a long-lived secret merely because an older pattern feels familiar. Treat agents as their own class of actor, then build the surrounding controls to match.

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A useful test. If an incident responder cannot tell what the agent is, who sponsors it, and why it has access, the identity design is incomplete.

Key takeaways

  • User accounts represent people, application registrations represent conventional software, and agent identities represent artificial intelligence agents as a distinct non-human actor.
  • An agent identity has a unique object ID, display name, sponsor, blueprint, no credentials of its own, and sometimes a paired agent’s user account.
  • The most important security property is that the agent identity does not store a standing password, client secret, or certificate.
  • A sponsor connects each agent to an accountable human user or group, which is essential for reviews and incident response.
  • An agent’s user account is only a compatibility bridge for systems that require user-account sign-in, and it should remain one-to-one with the agent identity.
  • Good agent governance starts by choosing the correct identity type instead of disguising agents as users or ordinary applications.
A distinct purpose or access boundary earns a fresh governed identity. New Identity? Distinct purpose oraccess boundary? New agent identityits own object ID Reuse a blueprintshared pattern Yes No
A distinct purpose or access boundary earns a fresh governed identity.

Glossary

Agent identity
A Microsoft Entra identity record used by an artificial intelligence agent as a distinct non-human actor.
Application registration
A Microsoft Entra record that gives a software application an identity so it can request access to services.
Artificial intelligence agent
Software that can use context, tools, and instructions to pursue a goal with some degree of autonomous decision-making.
Blueprint
A reusable template that an agent identity is created from and that provides shared type information, metadata, policy context, and token acquisition.
Credential
A secret, password, certificate, or other proof used to show that an identity is allowed to sign in or request access.
Microsoft Entra
Microsoft’s cloud identity and access service for managing users, applications, devices, and other identities.
Object ID
A unique identifier generated by Microsoft Entra for a specific directory object, such as an agent identity.
Sponsor
The human user or group recorded as accountable for an agent identity.
Token
A short-lived digital proof that an identity can present to a service to perform an allowed action.